Blake Hall
To all those courageous service members who never got to come home, there’s now an honorary seat at Washington DC’s football team’s stadium in Landover, Maryland — FedExField.
And it’s all thanks to Rolling Thunder (and obviously, the National Football League), whose goal is to have a similar seat in every stadium across the country.
If you’re not familiar, Rolling Thunder is an advocacy group that pushes for “full accountability” for prisoners of war and those missing in action. While it’s an American outfit, there are now more than 90 chapters of the organization across the globe.
“Ninety-one thousand moms and dads don’t know what happened to their children who went out and fought for this country and tonight we’re going to show that America remembers them and that we’ll never forget them,” said veteran Robert Wilkins.
Watch as he and fellow vet and retired U.S. Marine Walt Sides unveil the chair in the following Military Times clip below:
The plaque reads:
“You Are Not Forgotten”
Since World War I, more than 92,000 American Soldiers are unaccounted for.
This unoccupied seat is dedicated to the memory of these brave men and women and to sacrifices each made in serving this country.
God Bless You. God Bless America.
Washington Redskins
September 12, 2016
While it’s an enormously great and necessary tribute, here’s where the question comes into play. Tell us what you think? We put service members in bold, in the lede, for a good reason.
Okay.
It reads “92,000 Soldiers“, but the number includes members of all the other branches: Marines, airmen, Coast Guard and sailors. It would be more appropriate if it read “veterans.”
And, on Rolling Thunder’s Facebook page, they have post where it cites that 83,000 “servicemembers” remain MIA from the “world wars, Korean War and Vietnam War”:
